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Bartees Strange faces his fears on 'Horror'

World Cafe

What is your biggest fear? What's that thing that makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up? Makes your skin crawl? Makes you feel that pit in your stomach?

Fear can be unpleasant, but it's also a survival instinct. Sometimes, it can even be fun, like when you watch a scary movie. In today's session, recorded in front of an audience at World Cafe Live in Philly, Bartees Strange talks about his new album, Horror.

It's an album that sees him facing fears, dissecting them and being shaped by them. He also talks about how he had to conquer fear to make the album, about working with Jack Antonoff, about how his survival instinct helped him choose the city he lives in, and about navigating the indie rock sphere as a Black musician.

Set List

  • "Sober"
  • "Baltimore"
  • "Backseat Banton"
  • "17"

This episode of World Cafe was produced and edited by Miguel Perez. Our senior producer is Kimberly Junod and our engineer is Chris Williams. Our programming and booking coordinator is Chelsea Johnson and our line producer is Will Loftus.

World Cafe senior producer Kimberly Junod has been a part of the World Cafe team since 2001, when she started as the show's first line producer. In 2011 Kimberly launched (and continues to helm) World Cafe's Sense of Place series that includes social media, broadcast and video elements to take listeners across the U.S. and abroad with an intimate look at local music scenes. She was thrilled to be part of the team that received the 2006 ASCAP Deems Taylor Radio Broadcast Award for excellence in music programming. In the time she has spent at World Cafe, Kimberly has produced and edited thousands of interviews and recorded several hundred bands for the program, as well as supervised the show's production staff. She has also taught sound to young women (at Girl's Rock Philly) and adults (as an "Ask an Engineer" at WYNC's Werk It! Women's Podcast Festival).
Miguel Perez is an assistant producer at KERA. He produces local content for Morning Edition and KERA News. He also produces The Friday Conversation, a weekly interview series with North Texas newsmakers.